Harvard Involved in African Land Grab?

Whatever happened to ethical investing?   Venerable Harvard University may be just one of America's top schools pumping endowment funds into deals that could force thousands of Africans off their lands.

The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.

Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent's clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.

World Bank Backs Global Farming LandGrab

The World Bank has backed the practice of countries selling large tracts of agricultural land to overseas investors, but is urging host countries to demand much more from investors to increase farming productivity and peoples’ livelihoods.  Um, yeah, sure.  We'll get right onto that.

The Third World's Bank of Doom says rich countries snapping up cheap farmland in poor countries is just dandy.  From the ever hilarious Financial Times:

"The World Bank is proposing a seven-principle code of conduct for investors and host countries, including respecting local land rights, ensuring food security, ensuring transparency and good governance, consultations with those involved, responsible agro-investing, social sustainability and environmental sustainability."

Undoubtedly the WB's "code of conduct" was met with a sigh of relief and a giggle from Big Agra whose ravenous predations are legendary.  Unfortunately many of the host countries fall well shy of democratic standards and tend to be headed by people less than interested in the vaunted seven principles.

"The bank says that “45m hectares worth of large scale farmland deals were announced” in 2009, compared with annual average expansion of agricultural land of less than 4m hectares before 2008.



Juergen Voegele, director of agriculture at the World Bank, says in the report that “given commodity price volatility, growing human and environmental pressures, and worries about food security”, interest in farmland is rising."

The report also blames Western (US & Britain) biofuel targets for driving the accelerated pace of landgrabs in the Third World.

"The report attributes this land grab to recent food price volatility and the increased demand for land that has resulted from biofuel targets in the US and EU. Specifically, it notes that "biofuel mandates may have large indirect effects on land use change, particularly converting pasture and forest land."


With Wall Street already gaming global grain production, even to the point of driving food prices out of reach of the public in producing nations, the World Bank's support for the spread of industrial agriculture through the Third World doesn't bode well for the small farmers eeking out a living in the weak, poor target countries.

The WB report can be found here: 

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/ESW_Sept7_final_final.pdf